Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world. 

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.

• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

Job Summary:

We are hiring a Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer to shape the future of personalization and content recommendations across Disney+, Hulu, ABC, and ESPN. As one of the most senior technical leaders in our organization, you will set the direction for machine learning innovation at scale—guiding both long-term vision and near-term execution for products that impact hundreds of millions of users. This is a strategic individual contributor role with broad technical scope and organizational influence. You will define architectural standards for personalization systems, lead cross-functional initiatives spanning multiple business units, and drive the development of novel algorithms that deliver measurable user and business value. You will partner with executive leadership across Engineering, Product, and Data to align personalization strategies with company-wide priorities. In addition to solving high-impact technical challenges, you will serve as a thought leader and mentor—elevating the work of other senior engineers and helping build a culture of technical excellence and innovation across the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision for personalization and recommendation systems across Disney+, Hulu, ABC, and ESPN—ensuring alignment with overarching product and business strategies.

• Lead the development of foundational machine learning architectures and algorithms, enabling scalable, real-time, and highly personalized user experiences for hundreds of millions of users.

• Serve as a cross-functional thought leader, partnering with senior executives in Product, Engineering, Data, and Design to influence company-wide personalization strategy and investment.

• Identify and drive high-impact initiatives that advance the state-of-the-art in machine learning, guiding efforts from concept through deployment with measurable business outcomes.

• Mentor and elevate technical leaders across teams, fostering a culture of innovation, rigor, and excellence in machine learning engineering.

• Set standards for experimentation, model evaluation, and algorithm fairness; establish frameworks and tools to accelerate development and promote reproducibility.

• Represent Disney Streaming’s personalization efforts in strategic forums, internal councils, and external technical communities (e.g., conferences, publications, industry panels).

Basic Qualifications:

• Track recordings of research & publications in recommendation system domain with deep neural net algorithms.

• Strong proficiency in at least one of the following deep learning frameworks, tensorflow, pytorch.

• Experiences building and deploying full stack ML pipelines: data extraction, data mining, model training, feature development, testing, and deployment.

• Track record from design to full production of effective recommendation systems.

• Experience with cloud services in a production environment (particularly AWS).

• Understanding of statistical concepts (e.g., hypothesis testing, regression analysis).

• Ability to articulate the usage and behavior of models and algorithms to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• 12+ years of relevant experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s or PhD in statistics, math, computer science, or related quantitative field.

• Production experience with developing content recommendation algorithms at scale and familiar with metadata management, data lineage, and principles of data governance.

• Deep understanding in personalization challenges in homepage experience and proven records of developing effective solutions.

Experience with:

• 12+ years of experience in developing highly scalable machine learning products

• 12+ years writing production-level, scalable Python codes

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA & New York, NY is $234,400 to $314,300 per year, in San Francisco, CA is $245,100 to $328,600 per year and in Los Angeles/Santa Monica, CA is $223,700 to $300,000 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.